Maurice Lepine Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1952 -

The painter Maurice Lépine develops his artistic technique through experience as well as through training with professional painters and watercolorists. He explores several mediums, including oil, pastel, watercolor and acrylic, which he occasionally combines to create particular plastic effects. Pencils, brushes and spatulas are the tools he mainly uses. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions since 1988. His works appear in several private and public collections in Canada, France, Italy and the United States. His favorite subjects are the landscape and the human figure.

Since 1998, Maurice Lépine has co-organized, on a voluntary basis, at Collège Ahuntsic, the Free Living Model Workshops with Marie Migneron (retired teacher in Computer Graphics). Offered to the college community, this extracurricular activity allows you to exercise your creativity in front of a model, man or woman, who poses for a few hours. Without constraint, participants explore a two-dimensional medium, such as painting, pastel, watercolor or drawing, on canvas or on paper, as they wish.
Live model painting

The painting Marilyn , title which takes the first name of the model, was produced as part of a session of the Free Living Model Workshops in the fall of 2007. It was acquired following an exhibition by Maurice Lépine, entitled My Fridays in Color , held at the Laurent-Michel-Vacher Library from November 27 to December 6, 2007. Among the works on display, library employees chose this painting, which has since been exhibited at Collège Ahuntsic.

As Maurice Lépine practices, living model painting is special. It requires, on the part of the creator, great availability in order to translate on canvas, by pictorial means, the mood of the moment, given by the pose or the choice of the model's costume during the workshop session.

The artist makes aesthetic decisions quickly. What will be the composition of the work (place occupied by the subject, framing, depth of field)? What colors will be preferred (warm, cold, contrasting range, etc.)? The invoice, in other words the trace of the artist's gesture in the material, will it be very visible (texture and impasto)? Etc. All these decisions, taken spontaneously at the very moment of the activity, have a major impact on the recognition of shapes by the spectator.

The work produced in this context is both the observation and the subjectivity of the artist. For example, the depiction of a model posing in a studio usually suggests a static subject, as many academic drawings show. However, here, by the application of colors and the treatment of the surface with the traces of the brushes, the painter makes the painting vibrate and gives an impression of movement which breaks with the immobility of the pose and the traditional representation. Additionally, as the model stood in front of a white background in the studio, the artist brushed the background in vivid hues, matching those of the model's costume.

The work, performed on site, visually bears witness to the spontaneity, pictorial technique and expressiveness of Maurice Lépine at this precise moment.